Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[TheTalkingMule]

Perhaps we see fewer shenanigans in 2023/24/25 if these Russian sanctions are upheld long-term!

Abramovich's U.S. hedge fund investments frozen- WSJ

Some U.S. hedge-fund firms that have investments from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich have been told to freeze his assets after Britain imposed sanctions on him, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

www.reuters.com

 

[UkNorthampton]

Perhaps we see fewer shenanigans in 2023/24/25 if these Russian sanctions are upheld long-term!

Abramovich's U.S. hedge fund investments frozen- WSJ

Some U.S. hedge-fund firms that have investments from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich have been told to freeze his assets after Britain imposed sanctions on him, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

www.reuters.com

DoJ investigation prompted by upcoming Ukraine invasion? I could imagine some anti Tesla/Ev acitivity from those connected to rogue hydrocarbon tyrannies.

 

[Gigapress]

Vision needs to work for autonomy. Using Lidar when vision works is equivalent to me, a person with functional eyesight, deciding to carry around a cane meant for people with blindness. Would I stop to evaluate the situation every time the tip of the cane hits anything? No, I'm going to use my eyes to override that signal anyway because the information stream coming into my eyeballs is so much more useful and doesn't frequently give me false positives. This is the same reason Tesla dropped radar. Steve said Lidar hadn't caught on yet because it looks big and ugly, couldn't see 250 meters in fog and rain, and didn't cost a few hundred bucks. Radar has met these conditions all along and the only fundamental difference is radar uses a different wavelength of photons. So how does Steve explain Tesla's voluntary decision to drop radar? It's not like Elon would've felt a need to do that to save face somehow. Andrej Karpathy discussed the issues with Lidar and Radar in depth at CVPR last year.

I also am shocked that Steve said 2022 revenue would be $88 billion. It's going to be much higher. They're going to earn almost at that rate in Q1. I think 50% chance it's over $100 billion just for Model 3 and Y in 2022.

And in what meaningful way is Elon not a founder? Eberhard and Tarpenning had nothing more than a deeply flawed business plan and a sales pitch, which every investor except Elon ignored. The court already decided this. It's settled.

Finally, saying Elon doesn't like to admit he's wrong is absurd, because he does so more than any other leader I've ever seen. This is on of the main reasons I'm invested. His whole philosophy is based around assuming that everything is wrong and we're trying to become less wrong. Examples: saying the original plan for Tesla was "based on two false premises", completely scrapping the mobileye relationship, admitting to over-automating the original Model 3 line, cancelling the carbon fiber starship and starting over with stainless steel. Clinging to the same rationale when none of the premises have changed is not stubbornness, it's rationality.

Steve lost a lot of credibility in my mind after this interview. I had higher expectations for him, although I did enjoy the interview overall.

 

[Bet TSLA]

The problem with synthetic shares isn't that you won't eventually get legitimate shares. The real problem is that supply and demand is what sets the price of the shares. If the number of shares is artificially increased, then all shares are worth less. It's not different from printing more money. There is a price to pay when synthetic shares can be created from thin air. It subverts the normal and proper functioning of markets.

I never claimed otherwise. All I'm objecting to is this repeated nonsense of claiming that failures to report accurately what was in people's accounts is somehow evidence of cheating. It isn't.

 

[MikeC]

We need to invoke the Defense Production Act to build Cybertrucks:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1502690789675130885

 

[Electroman]

Vision needs to work for autonomy. Using Lidar when vision works is equivalent to me, a person with functional eyesight, deciding to carry around a cane meant for people with blindness. Would I stop to evaluate the situation every time the tip of the cane hits anything? No, I'm going to use my eyes to override that signal anyway because the information stream coming into my eyeballs is so much more useful and doesn't frequently give me false positives. This is the same reason Tesla dropped radar.

I see your point and agree with that on principle. But here are the issues that naysayers are pointing out:

Everything what you said is true for a human who has an amazing vision and a fantastic brain that can process it so well that it can detect so many things and make decisions fast. But in a Tesla given where the cameras and computer tech is right now, it is equivalent to someone with poor vision and a mental and cognitive acumen of a 5 year old. Hence the call to have crutches like Lidar and Radar.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Man on the street report (and why the H aren't there more of these???)

Yesterday stopped by the local sales and service center. It was just as busy as last time, almost every possible inch of parking taken up by cars, vehicles double parked. Nobody even glanced at me when I parked in front of other cars, basically double parking. There were no longer vehicles out on the grass towards the street, there sure needed to be, perhaps a code enforcer stopped by. THought there was a lawn service trailer open until I saw a truck inside the trailer, maybe it was hauling away trades.

I went into the showroom, only a red 3 on display, a handful of people around, seemed to be waiting on service. Nobody really available to help me with a few questions for my delivery Mar 24-28 if account is telling the truth. I could see some on computers in a locked office, lady came out holding paper and went in the back. Tesla employees coming and going from the lot, seemingly looking for a car, perhaps dropping one off or taking it back for prep or service. I had commented to one guy about how busy they were and he said it has been like that all week.

Finding no help, I went back out in the lot, tracked someone down, got my simple questions answered, and went on my way.
1. I asked about Tesla trade in prices vs Carmax, got a non committal answer that sometimes Carmax offers are better.
2. New cars are being delivered complete- nothing is missing from them.
3 FSD does not roll over automatically (if purchased), one has to get back in line. DARN, we love it.
4. Hitch comes with receiver only.
5. No more shiny piano black consoles.

As a formerly employed hard worker, it used to bug me to have others sitting around. When visiting stores today, it bugs me to not have help when employees are gathered chatting and not helping. Makes me think they feel too confident in their jobs.

Everybody in uniform at TSLA was abuzz with worker bee energy!

Anyone know what Tesla gives on FSD trade-ins? In an Earning's Call, rumors of zero value were dismissed but I never saw an actual credit figure.

I've experienced trying to trade-in a Volkswagen (years ago, sold privately instead for $2K more). Maybe this is on another thread somewhere but lots of folks here asking trade-in questions could mean new demand coming from existing owners creates a new wave of used in Q2 onward. It would be good to see these get a price drop on used, but something tells me that's not going to happen even though there could be millions waiting for a good used one for under $30k. We'll see.

 

[Hock1]

Anyone know what Tesla gives on FSD trade-ins? In an Earning's Call, rumors of zero value were dismissed but I never saw an actual credit figure.

I've experienced trying to trade-in a Volkswagen (years ago, sold privately instead for $2K more). Maybe this is on another thread somewhere but lots of folks here asking trade-in questions could mean new demand coming from existing owners creates a new wave of used in Q2 onward. It would be good to see these get a price drop on used, but something tells me that's not going to happen even though there could be millions waiting for a good used one for under $30k. We'll see.

OT..Anyone know the current wait for refreshed S LR?

 

[SOULPEDL]

Interesting to see who is pushing this:

Senators Urge Biden to Invoke Defense Act for Battery Materials

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. Senators sent a bipartisan letter to the Biden administration Friday afternoon asking the president to invoke the Defense Production Act to accelerate production of battery materials that are needed to power electric vehicles.Most Read from BloombergUkraine Update: U.S...

finance.yahoo.com

Problem brewing? Force Tesla to share US minerals to slow them? (I don't know the whole mining picture or geographies, so just asking.)

 

[JRP3]

And in what meaningful way is Elon not a founder?

Timing. Simple as that. You can't redefine a term. The company was founded before Elon was involved, he came along about 8 months later.

 

[Gigapress]

I see your point and agree with that on principle. But here are the issues that naysayers are pointing out:

Everything what you said is true for a human who has an amazing vision and a fantastic brain that can process it so well that it can detect so many things and make decisions fast. But in a Tesla given where the cameras and computer tech is right now, it is equivalent to someone with poor vision and a mental and cognitive acumen of a 5 year old. Hence the call to have crutches like Lidar and Radar.

The video of Andrej's presentation says that as of last summer, they have unequivocally concluded from their test data that the Radar/Lidar crutch is actively worse than not having it at all.

"The vision system that we have been building for the last few years has been getting so incredibly good that it's kind of leaving a lot of the other sensors in the dust...Vision is getting to the point where the sensor is like 100x better than, say, radar. Then, if you have a sensor that is dominating the other sensor and is so much better, then the other [inferior] sensor is really starting to...hold you back and starting to contribute noise...And so we are really doubling down on the vision approach."

Also, Tesla does, or at least did in the past, use Lidar in some test vehicles to help train and test vision-based object depth detection. So, they know exactly the relative performance of their vision and lidar in terms of depth measurements. Andrej showed a slide with a representative example of this test data.

 

[Nocturnal]

Just got the VIN for my Model Y. Unfortunately it's a Freemont car. Ordered 12/20, ETA 3/24-3/28 now. Original estimate had been mid-February.

Timing. Simple as that. You can't redefine a term. The company was founded before Elon was involved, he came along about 8 months later.

Seems like such a pointless argument. What timeframe would make him legit? 8 days? 8 hours? Is it when the company is a going concern vs something being done on paper?

 

[Knightshade]

I'm curious, does this mean Tesla must honor early Model 3s FSD with Full Autonomy? Somehow I doubt it, but would hate to trade something in with solid FSD contract for a diluted L5 version.

FSD as sold today is not a "diluted L5 version" it is explicitly L2, and says so in writing during purchase. Aspirationally the company certainly hopes to and plans to deliver far more- but they don't "owe" you any more per the terms of sale than L2 autosteer on city streets.

The pre 3/19 version was (at least) L4 in writing during purchase (you can debate if it was describing L4 or L5)


So yes- what was promised to 3/19 buyers is significantly greater than post 3/19 buyers for FSD.

But as I said, this only matters if Tesla fails to be able to deliver greater than L2 on current HW (or something reasonable upgradable from current HW like just swapping the driving computer up to HW4 or whatever).

In THAT case the difference will matter as far as who might be owed $ back or some other compensation.

If they succeed at delivering >L2 I expect both sets of buyers will receive the same thing, up to and including L5 if they can achieve it.

So if you are confident they will get to L5 on existing (or reasonable upgrade from current on existing vehicles) HW then trading won't make a difference to you at all.

If you're not, then it might make a difference to you.



Again- the change in wording accomplishes two things:


1) It allows them to recognize all remaining revenue for post 3/19 buyers much sooner (specifically, as soon as they deliver L2 autosteer on city streets- since it's the last specifically promised thing.... they still could NOT recognize 100% of the remaining revenue from pre 3/19 buyers but that's pocket change at this point)

2) It significantly reduces their liability if they decide they're unable to deliver L4 or L5 on current HW.


Folks wanting to argue about how likely #2 is I'd suggest head here- where there's been extensive discussion on that for a long time:

AI, Autopilot, & Autonomous/FSD

Discussion about AI, Tesla Bot, Tesla Autopilot (AP), the promise of Full Self Driving (FSD), as well as other Autonomous Vehicles.

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[MABMAB]

Anyone know what Tesla gives on FSD trade-ins? In an Earning's Call, rumors of zero value were dismissed but I never saw an actual credit figure.

I've experienced trying to trade-in a Volkswagen (years ago, sold privately instead for $2K more). Maybe this is on another thread somewhere but lots of folks here asking trade-in questions could mean new demand coming from existing owners creates a new wave of used in Q2 onward. It would be good to see these get a price drop on used, but something tells me that's not going to happen even though there could be millions waiting for a good used one for under $30k. We'll see.

I've received zero help on the whole trade in advice request, sorry, can't answer that.
In essence, every car has FSD, it just has to be paid for. Nothing keeps them from buying the car and selling it at market price and trying to get market price for FSD again.

 

[MABMAB]

Just got the VIN for my Model Y. Unfortunately it's a Freemont car. Ordered 12/20, ETA 3/24-3/28 now. Original estimate had been mid-February.


Seems like such a pointless argument. What timeframe would make him legit? 8 days? 8 hours? Is it when the company is a going concern vs something being done on paper?

I get the excitement for new battery pack car, but I'd rather have well proven tech and product. perhaps there will be some wrinkles to iron out

 

[JRP3]

Seems like such a pointless argument. What timeframe would make him legit? 8 days? 8 hours? Is it when the company is a going concern vs something being done on paper?

If you aren't there at the founding of the company you aren't a founder. This is really simple stuff, there is no legitimate case to be made otherwise. If I start a company today and you invest in it or get hired 8 months later you aren't a founder.

 

[Tommy O]

Huge EV disinformation push on Twitter has sprung up. Hmm, wonder who all could be concerned with the death of the ICE?

The good news is, reality will win. For example, here’s a quote from a friend/new model 3 owner/employee of a Tesla competitor: “lmao this car is unreal.”

And he’s right. The car is unreal…but it’s also quite real.

Good luck to the inevitable losers!

 

[Tommy O]

If you aren't there at the founding of the company you aren't a founder. This is really simple stuff, there is no legitimate case to be made otherwise. If I start a company today and you invest in it or get hired 8 months later you aren't a founder.

You’re absolutely right. I think most people mean to complain about the pedantry of the term as used to discredit Elon. It’s a boring argument.

 

[JRP3]

You’re absolutely right. I think most people mean to complain about the pedantry of the term as used to discredit Elon. It’s a boring argument.

No question Elon is the most significant person in the success of the company by far. There is no need to twist reality to make him something he's not.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Problem brewing? Force Tesla to share US minerals to slow them? (I don't know the whole mining picture or geographies, so just asking.)

Sounds like you're fearing a situation like in WW2 where factories and mineral suppliers were mandated by the government to divert resources and production to the war. I can assure you that's not the case here.

1) Currently almost all of Tesla's mineral sources/contract are outside the US. I believe Tesla only has one contract with US mineral miner.
2) Tesla entire production is already the focus of the would be Defense Act.
3) If the government does provide incentive and quick regulation to start mining minerals in the US, who do you think is going to be able to take advantage of it and benefit from it? All of legacy auto and the EV newcomers outsource their battery cells/pack. Tesla is the only one actively producing their own battery cells/packs here in the US.

If it was something from an internal projection then it's slightly outdated. So I guarantee you it doesn't factor in the latest dynamics for Tesla's business. As in, with this demand surge, price hikes (probably more in the future), Tesla prioritizing higher trim and FSD orders, etc.......So probably take that 88 billion number and add 5% to it. So more like 70% growth of 92 billion.

To reply to myself here, I realized this morning if he was in fact talking about internal projections.......then he's referencing the projections that Tesla gave analysts back in Dec. 65% of 934k deliveries is 1.5 million. That's the exact guidance that was given to analysts.

No doubt, Tesla only gave guidance that they thought for sure they could beat. They've been sandbagging guidance for a while now. So if Tesla is giving guidance to analyst of 1.5 million, then they were likely around targeting around 1.6-1.7 million deliveries.